Say Cheese: Facebook to Access Instagram Data

Instagram is changing its privacy policy in order to share user data with its new parent company, Facebook.

According to a company blog postposted on thephoto-sharing guru's website, the privacy changes will take place Jan. 16. The company emphasized, however, that the changes will not impact the users' ability to control who sees their photos, or ownership of those pictures.

"Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups," Instagram wrote.

"This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used," it added.

In April, Facebook bought the photo-sharing application in April for $1 billion, the social network's largest acquisition to date.

Since Facebook acquired Instagram, it has expanded from a simple mobile application, to a website where users can also view photos.

Last week, Instagram scaled back its access on Twitter— one of Facebook's top social-networking competitors — when it removed a preview feature that allowed Twitter users to view Instagram pics posted on the platform.